1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management of complex projects. More particularly, the present invention relates to the field of project schedule management for large and complex projects and to methods and systems designed to enable a collaborative and distributed maintenance of project schedules.
2. Description of the Related Art
The development of a new product, whether tangible or intangible (such as a new service) is often mapped out in a project, which sets out an anticipated timeline for taking the product or service from concept through final implementation, distribution or production. Such projects may be phenomenally complex at their inception or may become so during the lifetime thereof, particularly in the high technology, aerospace, defense and financial services industries, to identify but a few examples. Software tools exist that help project managers define the project and an anticipated project timeline. However, such tools typically give the manager only a macro-level view of the project and of the constituent tasks thereof. More often than not, however, projects do not docilely follow their anticipate timeline, as set out at the beginning of the project. Indeed, unanticipated problems arise in all but the simplest projects. As such problems arise and are addressed, the originally defined project timeline and the actual progress of the project over time diverge and may ultimately bear little useful relation to one another. Moreover, as the complexity of the project rises, the burden of updating the project schedule may become a significant drain on resources, further eroding its perceived usefulness in the eyes of those tasked with managing the project. When this happens, critical updates may not be incorporated into the project schedule, which further decreases its utility as a predictor of project completion and as a project status indicator.
Large and complex projects may involve hundreds or thousands of people, and are often widely distributed, not only across geographical and political boundaries, but also across enterprise boundaries and time zones. More often than not, the contributors to a project do not have (and need not have) the same level of access to the project details and schedule. Compartmentalization is commonly used to segregate project contributors for a variety of reasons, such as to insure security. The consequence of such compartmentalization, however, is that project contributors do not have the access required to determine the relative importance of the task assigned to them within the project. As most tasks within a project are connected to many others, a failure or delay in even a seemingly low-level task may have profound repercussions in higher level tasks as the effect of that failure or delay ripples up the project hierarchy.
What are needed, therefore, are improved project scheduling tools that enable project contributors to dynamically update the project definition and timeline. What is also needed are methods and systems to enable potentially widely disseminated project contributors to update the status of their assigned task in a secure manner and in a manner that insures that the overall project timeline accurately describes the current status of the entire project and its constituent tasks and functions as an accurate predictor of the project completion. Also needed is a scheduling tool for large and complex projects that is sufficiently flexible as to enable project contributors to define new tasks and problem Issues and that enables the tracking of the progress of such new task and Issues, from definition through resolution thereof.